Winter is coming… Is your generator ready?

The southern region of the country is still recovering from a very active hurricane season. Huge areas were knocked out of power for days. Following the tragic heat caused death of eight patients of a Florida nursing home, the Florida legislature enacted an emergency law requiring all nursing & medical facilities to maintain a 96 hour supply of backup power. This means, all of those facilities must have standby generators capable of providing emergency power for four days. We have provided dozens of refuelers to these facilities, so they may remain in compliance.

We also sent almost 80 mobile refuelers to Puerto Rico for their storm disaster recovery. These will be used to rebuild infrastructure, particularly communications & public utilities.

It becomes ever so clear, that “prevention” is much harder to sell than “cure”.

Had the nursing home in Florida prepared adequately, tragic loss of life may have been averted. If the utility companies in Puerto Rico had planned ahead, they could have recovered from the hurricanes far more quickly. It’s always easier to realize you’ve got a problem or weakness after the fact. Preparing & planning ahead, vastly reduces the chance of disaster becoming a far worse event for your community.

Which brings us back around to winter…
This year, there will undoubtedly be thousands of people left in the dark due to weather related power outages. Some only briefly, some for longer periods of time.

In the massive Northeast power outage several years ago, over 55% of standby generators failed to start. The primary cause? Stale, old fuel. Bio-growth in tanks. Clogged fuel filters.
too many companies, public agencies, etc., had simply let their generators sit with little to no maintenance. Take this as your cue to go try and start your backup generator. Run it for at least a half hour, under load if possible. Do this now, BEFORE you need to rely on it to provide emergency power.

You’ll also want to consider how much run time your generator can provide. When the fuel tank runs dry, no more power… You don’t want to count on fuel suppliers to come out during a power outage, at least not anytime soon…

This is when you realize that a TransFueler might be a very good thing to buy. Refuel your generators when you need to. 24/7, every day of the year, including weekends & holidays..

We recently sold 14 TransFueler 1000 gallon fuel trailers to a major grocery store chain. One for each of their regional warehouses. Before, they were limited to a few hours of generator run time. Now, they can refuel their standby generators for several days in case of an extended power failure.